The problem with Android, part 2 [Updated]

On Wednesday, I received a Samsung Galaxy Note from AT&T to review. This is a smartphone I’ve been very interested in testing. It has a whopping 5-inch screen, an LTE connection and a fast processor, but it’s still slim and light. It seemed to me that larger size would allow for a bigger battery, which in turn would mean longer times between charges than most other smartphones that use fast LTE data connections – which are notorious for killing a battery’s staying power.

So when I finally got a chance to open the box and play with the device during last night’s episode of Technology Bytes, I realized something that seriously killed my geek buzz: This brand new, state-of-the-art smartphone comes with an out-of-date operating system. The Galaxy Note runs Android 2.3.6, a.k.a. Gingerbread. It does not come with the newer Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich.

But wait! This is a new phone from Samsung, which last year began selling the Galaxy Nexus – the first smartphone running ICS. Once that cat’s out of the bag, why would Samsung even consider releasing newer phones running older versions of Android?

Samsung has said that it will have an ICS update for the Galaxy Note by the end of the current quarter. AT&T, however, won’t say when it will make that update available to owners of the Note on its service, according to InfoWorld. However, I suspect it will be several more months before the ICS bits begin to flow to Note owners.

Look, Samsung, AT&T, and all other handset makers and carriers who are churning out hot new Android phones: Get with the program.

It’s a gross disservice to your customers and to the Android community as a whole to release new smartphones that don’t have the latest available operating system. As the meme says,You’re doing it wrong. It perpetuates fragmentation and thus gives the top competitor – Apple and its iPhone – an edge.

Apple would never think of shipping one of its smartphones with, say, a version of iOS 4 now that version 5 is out.

Of course, Apple has it easier, because it controls both the hardware and software on its devices, and the carriers don’t have much of a say over those updates. (That may change now that Apple’s moved to over-the-air updates for iOS, but so far, there’s no indication the carriers are butting in to that process.) With Android, there are many different handset makers, and each carrier has further customized its phones with service-specific features and, yes, crapware. Compensating for this complexity environment iswhy it takes so long to get Android updates to users, and that’s Android’s second biggest problem.

The first, I wrote back in October, is that Android lacks polish and consistency when compared to iOS. Ice Cream Sandwich goes a long way to fix that problem, but owners of the Galaxy Note won’t find that out until some time this year. And then, of course, it will be a version that AT&T and Samsung will have tweaked to their own ends. it likely won’t be as pleasurable as the nearly “pure” Android 4.0 experience found on the Google-controlled Galaxy Nexus.

The bottom line is this: At this point, all new Android phones should have Ice Cream Sandwich, period. The fact that we’re still seeing cutting-edge hardware with an outdated OS is a major failure of the relationship between carriers, handset makers and Google.

Update: Today’s Dilbert cartoon is semi-apropos. I’ll address the Galaxy Note’s size and other hardware attributes in my print column on Tuesday, but Scott Adams is on the case today . . .